Photographing people
This section focuses on techniques and tools that will help you improve your people pictures, whether you're taking family photos for the living-room wall or employee head shots for your company newsletter. The first part of the chapter provides some general advice about using your digital camera for portrait work, and the remaining pages offer some specific tricks that you can use when shooting casual, formal, and outdoor portraits.
Taking advantage of portrait mode | Using metadata |
Casual indoor portraits | Using flash | Candid photos | Outdoor portraits
Basics of digital portrait photography
Shooting a digital portrait involves many of the same concerns as a film portrait -- good lighting, complementary clothing and backgrounds, and, of course, a reasonably cooperative subject. But working with a digital camera throws some additional issues into the mix, as the next few sections explain.
Choosing aperture and shutter speed
Portrait photography calls for a large aperture, such as f/2.8 or f/3.5, which creates a short depth of field and therefore leaves the background slightly soft in focus. A short depth of field makes the subject more visually prominent because the viewer's eye goes first to whatever is in sharpest focus. In addition, reducing the depth of field makes distracting background objects less noticeable.
You can set aperture precisely if your camera offers either manual exposure or aperture-priority autoexposure (AE). Remember that as you enlarge the aperture (by shifting to a lower f-stop number), you need to increase shutter speed to account for the additional light that comes through that larger aperture. In aperture-priority AE, the camera makes the adjustment for you automatically.
Taking advantage of portrait mode
Many digital cameras offer scene modes, which automatically select aperture, shutter speed, and other settings that are appropriate for various types of pictures. The two most common scene modes are portrait and landscape.
Each camera manufacturer uses different settings for its scene modes, but portrait mode typically selects the largest available aperture to achieve the shortest possible depth of field. Depending on the camera, portrait mode may also select a particular focal length, sharpening amount, flash setting, and exposure metering mode. You can see what settings your camera chooses in portrait mode by shooting some sample pictures and then inspecting the metadata in an image viewer. You then can decide whether you can rely on portrait mode or need to take more control. Remember that the settings your camera selects in any scene mode will vary depending on the amount of light present.
Using metadata
Metadata is extra information that's stored with the image file when you take a picture. This data includes the type of camera, the exposure setting, focal length, time, date, and more. Cameras store this data in a standard format called EXIF (Exchangeable Image File Format), so that you can review information about the image later.
Tip: Improve your portraits by using light from a nearby window.
Casual indoor portraits
The secret to great home portraits is, as with so many things in life, simplicity. You don't need expensive studio lighting or a fancy backdrop. A chair positioned next to a sunlit window offers an ideal foundation for an indoor portrait. (If the chair is upholstered, be sure that it isn't covered with a busy fabric that will be distracting in the photo.)
Window light provides a good starting point for an indoor portrait.
Although window light will serve well as your major light source, it likely will not be entirely sufficient. The following sections discuss a variety of options for bringing additional light to your photo.
Tip: Using an external flash can be a mixed blessing.
Using flash
The easiest way to add light is to switch on your camera's built-in flash. Unfortunately, red-eye problems often result. However, because your subject's pupils will be constricted somewhat in response to the bright window light, red-eye shouldn't be as severe as it would be if you were using flash in a dark room. In addition to causing red-eye, a built-in flash is too focused to produce soft, even lighting.
Compare the left image to the right, which was shot using an external flash bounced off the wall behind the subject. The face in the second image is much more evenly lit, and red-eye is no longer a problem. But on the downside, the stronger light produced by the external flash creates a large, harsh shadow that pulls attention away from the subject.
When working with an external flash, you can soften shadows by placing a piece of translucent white plastic or paper over the flash head to diffuse the light. You also can find commercial flash diffusers in your local camera store. Keep in mind that you may need to increase exposure because you will be reducing the amount of direct light hitting the subject. Depending on your camera and flash, you also may be able to adjust the flash output.
Candid photos
It's not necessary to ask people to pose for their photograph. It can interrupt the mood of a party or gathering, and getting people to stand still for a quick snapshot is often a challenge. So when it's not practical or desirable to arrange people, lighting, or the setting, just take pictures on the sly.
Don't always insist that people face the camera and say "cheese." Instead, look for opportunities to catch a subject enjoying an everyday activity, which almost always offers a truer reflection of a subject's personality and is infinitely more interesting. Also, capturing interaction between people tells more about their relationship than the typical shoulder-to-shoulder arrangement that most people use for their family photos.
If you're trying to photograph very young children, fire the flash a few times before you really get serious so that they can get used to your presence. After a while, they'll forget that you're there, and you can capture them doing what they do best: being kids.
Outdoor portraits
It's a good idea to take portraits outdoors during the daytime, because it's much easier than working indoors. The sun provides a convenient (and energy efficient) light source, you don't have to worry about red-eye, and you can usually find a suitable backdrop close by -- a stand of evergreens, a garden, or even a brick wall. Your only real challenge is making sure that your subject is properly exposed. The following techniques will help you accomplish that goal:
- The best times of day to work outdoors are in mid-morning and late afternoon. Try to avoid shooting at midday, when the position of the sun can create harsh shadows on the face.
- Position subjects so that they don't directly face the sun. Otherwise, they will have trouble not squinting. Either move your subjects into a shady spot or position them so that the sun is to one side or behind them. Another option is to have someone hold a large piece of cardboard between the sun and your subject -- to create your own shade, in other words.
- When your subject is in front of the sun -- backlit, as photographers say -- guard against underexposing the image. In normal autoexposure metering mode, your camera takes the entire frame into account when calculating exposure. As a result, strong backlighting results in an exposure that leaves the foreground subject underexposed and dark.
- If your camera offers a choice of autoexposure metering modes, switch to centre-weighted or spot metering mode. For a single subject, spot metering usually works best. But for a group of people, centre-weighted may be a better option. Spot metering calculates exposure based on a small area in the centre of the frame, and centre-weighted metering gives preferential treatment to the centre of the frame but doesn't completely discount the perimeter.
Because bright sunlight can wash out a camera's LCD monitor, determining whether you have a decent exposure can be difficult. One accessory that can help is an LCD hood, which casts some shade onto the monitor. However, even with a hood, don't rely on your LCD monitor as a completely accurate indicator of exposure. Take a series of shots using different settings to make sure that you come home with at least one decent image.
A bright sunny background often causes your subject's face to be underexposed (left).
Using a flash helps to bring the face out of the shadows (right).
Content adapted from Shoot Like a Pro!: Digital Photography Techniques, McGraw-Hill Publishing, and used with permission: CNET Networks © 2007, and McGraw-Hill © 2007.
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